


A Crack in the Moon

by Esurielt



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 17:24:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20998577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esurielt/pseuds/Esurielt
Summary: “There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen





	A Crack in the Moon

Nyx decided. The most beautiful moment in the universe is when you are leaving a planet's atmosphere.  
It's a long, hearting-hanging process. Nyx darted his eyes among every corner of the control panel. As he pointed the head of his ship to the sky, red warnings were beeping everywhere on his holographic view screens. His heart pounded in his ears, bleeding with despair and fear. Ahead is the thick moist layer of impenetrable cloud. His cockpit glass blurred and burned with visible flare. He bit on his white bottom lips and pushed the throttle control with a sinking heart. It's this or never. He would die. He would die if he didn't try.  
And then his view started to clear. Behind the terrible shuddering of the metal shell and the flare on the front glass, he started to see darkness, like leaking ink that polluted the white cloud and dyed it into a greyish blue mist. White, blinking stars popped even as the sun became intensely bright. More and more blue ink set off the shining dots like scattered diamonds. The next moment he was out. The darkness of the universe and sparkling light from far away stars swallowed him.  
Nyx let go of the control yoke with cruise control on, turning his head to gasp at the stunning sight. The thick, moist layer of sugar-color gas warped the wavelength of the penetrating light that tried to enter the clouds. Toward the blinding sun of the system, a gradient of earthy orange, fluffy white and icy blue hue vibrated around the planet's edge in the dark background of the void. A dazy joy flow through his bloodstream like his childhood candy high. He did it. He succeeded.  
He shook violently in the pilot seat, howled into his helmet as the wind becomes less and less audible. He laughed for minutes and stared into the stars with blank admiration. A foreign pleasure buzzed at the back of his head. An ancient word floated up and dissolved into nothingness. It was long gone in the dictionary of his people. A pure, delirious appreciation of the outside appearance of something. It feels strange and weirdly primitive.  
The excitement went on for almost an hour before Nyx actually realized a sense of loss. He did it. Years of preparation and research went into this project. Now he stood at the end of his work. He had no intention to land, at least not to land back on his home planet. In his "space truck" he named Moonville, he built himself a bed and artificial gardens. She - the spaceship - was his work of life, the vessel of his new-born liberty.  
The whole thing started at the age of five when he was on a plane to San Francisco where his mother found a new job in a public research facility. Nyx was extremely smart, but he was no genius, not in the sense that he came up with all the technology aboard the Lorville on his own. He just found another angle to look at them. At 4 when he started his regular classes on classical physics, he was soon drawn to more applicable knowledge such as quantum mechanics and engineering. This, unlike his future pursuits, was at least encouraged by society. So when he already understood the quantum fusion and dynamic energy theorem behind the engine of civilian planes that enabled them to travel from one place to the other side of the planet within an hour, looking at the distorting wind outside the plane window he was suddenly struck by the idea that, with a model that does the energy transformation ten times faster, it could easily bring a plane to the appropriate vibration wavelength of quantum tunneling - in plain words, do extremely long distance space travel.  
This idea grew root in the imaginative mind of a five-year-old. He only told it to two people in the world. His mother, a sophisticated world-famous scientist, smiled and brushed away his fantasy with encouraging words. Two years later he mentioned this to Stark, his best friend at the new grade school. Stark stared at him blankly, then stated it's impossible. It was the first gunshot of a battle. They later spent all the spare time together trying to convince each other otherwise. Teachers and parents saw it as healthy competitions and joked about their friendship while they rattled on tea parties and shared dinners. However, Nyx knows that they hate each other as much as they admire their opponent's brain.  
At the age of 11, Nyx's father died in the war against the Anarchists as a marine captain. Mother was too grief to bother with him so he was temporarily sent to his uncle Francis's farm on his summer vacation. Francis is a close-blood but distant-minded relative of Nyx's mother; they haven't contacted in years. He was not as well educated as Emily and was sent into farming in the Leveler Evaluation. Francis had a happy life with a son and a wife - although the later divorced him due to his alcoholism, but he worked and lived just like anyone else in the city. Only when Nyx arrived at Francis's farm he had truly understood how life in the countryside was nothing to be ashamed of or to feel lowly about. His personal credit still worked in the grocery station and the bread there smelled of earthy grass and lilac just like anywhere else on the farm. Francis brought him to went hiking and fishing along the mountain river; but what really attracted Nyx was the cellar of Francis's old farmhouse. Luke, Francis's son, moved down there to empty his room for Nyx. Good-hearted Luke wasn't complaining, but Nyx was. He asked Luke to move back so he could explore the inherited house’ cellar. And it proved fruitful.  
When the school started and Nyx saw Stark again, he brought out the treasure he found in the cellar for which he handcrafted a blue silicon cover out of some used phone cases. A brick thick printed original paper copy of Quantum Theory and Frequency Warping by the great physicist Zefram Cochrane. "It's an ancient artifact. " Stark said dryly. "Which is written by the father of modern quantum engineering. Look, here!" Nyx pointed at various passages that supported his theory, which outlined his fantasized engine that could bring men out of the solar system. In fact, it's such an intuitive design that made the modern plane engine seemed odd in comparison.  
"The theory was updated. " Stark insisted, "Even Albert Einstein made mistakes. "  
"But Einstein was ancient! "  
"So was Cochrane."  
Another day Stark came to school with triumph. “I tested the model. It will not work. ”  
“You tested the math? ”  
“The actual engine design as well. ”   
Nyx gasped with disbelief. He spent the entire summer proving the theory, scratching on paper because of the lack of computer access. “Show me!” He cried.   
They went into the computer lab after school. There were quite a number of smart children in the school and they often time occupied the lab during lunch break or study hour for personal or group research. After school, they usually have to go home for their parents’ social event or attend other research facilities. The after-school computer lab was full of gamers and less intelligent people. Nyx pumped into Timmy on his way in. They met before in Timmy’s parents’ party, but he wasn’t like his poet father or engineer mother. They had a fight when they were younger but Nyx didn’t hate him. He was in a much lower-level class than Nyx as well. So they just nodded.   
Stark pulled up the model and they ran some tests. It made no sense, but the computer said the engine doesn’t work. Nyx left the lab dazed and confused. He had a very strange sleep in which he swore he saw some peculiar things happen, but he could not remember.   
The next morning he laid on the bed, suddenly a mad thought crossed his mind - what if the computer was wrong? What if it really could work? No one ever questions the realisticness of the computing model. Nyx wasn’t an expert in computing yet, but he knew that the modern computer was the result of decades of universal machine learning databases and research of computer analysts. Questioning the computer, was like questioning the foundation of the universe. It was established in the past truths and experiences that no individual could achieve. He still told this to Stark, and his friend looked at him with wary eyes.   
However, Nyx didn’t give up right then. It’s hard for him to give up any reasonable doubt, until proved unreasonable. He decided to actually build one such engine himself. It wasn’t extremely hard to build since the tech covered in Cochrane was indeed very old. He ordered some parts with his research credits and borrowed the fusion core from his mother’s lab. At the end of the month, his model was done and running. He connected the engine to a 4-wheel cart and targeted a live news stage on the other side of the earth. It showed on the TV screen in no time. The engine worked. And it was actually way faster, and theoretically applicable for interplanetary or even inter-system travel. His next step was to build a motorcycle powered by this engine and rode it to Stark’s door. It almost gave Mrs. Grayson a heart attack.  
This was something that could change the entire way people travel. Stark urged Nyx to submit a patent and academic paper to the Global Engineering Committee. They waited with sheer excitement. After a year, he was awarded a children’s science reward and the highest honor level evaluation as a physical engineer - but then, nothing. It wasn’t that Nyx was expecting fame. However, over the course of the year, Nyx has given thoughts into it -- Why something so fundamental was left buried in the old books and nowhere to be found in their classroom? Why did the computer fail to recognize the obviously correct design? And one thing curious him the most, why did people leave the starry universe a fantasy of no man’s sky? There was something missing in Nyx’s chest. Something primitive and simple. Something natural and irrational. In a society where everyone was fed - did people lose the imagination down on the wealthy earth of modern convenience?  
He decided to continue his research and building of such engines, improving it to the maximum efficiency, until a black-suit agent knocked on his door. Nyx was taken into the airport without answers. He arrived at a rooftop in Central City - Nyx recognized the statue of their first global president projected into the city skyline. He was led to a glass office where seated a sunglass man. The man smiled at Nyx with eight perfectly white teeth.   
“Are you afraid? ” The man asked Nyx. It was then Nyx realized he was shaking, sweat dampened his hair and eyelashes. The man smiled even brighter, “A deeply flawed case indeed! Fascinating.” He clamped his hands together, “Don’t worry kiddo. I’m just the humble representative to congratulate your fantastic service to the world and the human race, young Mr. I understand you may feel a bit abrupt. However, believe me, we took a long time to consider and evaluate your case. Your engine work has been proved extremely successful, so we would like to - borrow a very old word in history - purchase your theory. ”  
“Purchase? ” Nyx repeat with a bit hesitation, “I believe this means exchanging benefits with tokens of material reward.”  
“Yes, yes. It was like that in the Old World. But people didn’t have universal physical care then, so their major concern was food and shelter. Today, you worry about your education and exploration of science, especially as a highest-honor level engineer. Here, in exchange for the right of overseeing the research in top facilities, we offer you the acceptance of Mankind Institution of Technology. ”   
Nyx gasped.   
The man smiled, “that’s right. The admission letter is here in the envelope. You will be admitted as a first-class engineering student in the fall next year.”   
“My deepest gratitude, Sir. ”Nyx mumbled, “What an honor. ”   
“Oh, you earned it yourself, kiddo. A very smart theory doesn’t come out from a head that doesn’t belong in MIT.”   
“I really didn’t do much. ” Nyx said, and suddenly confused, “I understand that the committee wants the top scientist working on this, but I merely found it in an old copy of Cochrane’s book. ”   
“A Cochrane’s book, yes. ” The man repeated, “But you have done a great discovery.”  
A year later he enrolled in MIT and was taking much harder classes than he ever took. He kept in touch with Stark who eventually went to a high level class of MIT through virtually perfect score on science evaluation. He later read some story about Cochrane’s late-year craziness and laughed on his amateur engine theory through Cochrane’s work. It’s a time when he voyaged further and further away from his childhood dream - until the accident in the woods.   
Similar things hadn’t happened in decades - the digital fences guiding the hiking trail glitched impossibly and formed a visible crack that allowed Nyx to fall through. The boy he was messing with widen his mouth and eyes and screamed. They spent days looking for Nyx - he was popular on TV programs for a while and the other boy was charged with a hacking crime. During the days he laid under the uncivilized valley, dew blurred his eyes and give him strange visions of emissive clouds and floating furniture. He stayed between asleep and awake like he could remember anything through his ancient human blood, tracing back into the barbaric past of emotion and irrationality. It was an experience that Nyx has never had.   
Ever since the accident, he couldn’t wake up without feeling something was missing - something has been forgotten. He searched in his memory about things he treasured in the past; he searched online about strange vision at night without useful explanations. “There was either something wrong with me or something wrong with the world. ” He wrote to Stark and left for the countryside. Francis’s farmhouse was gone, he has moved into another part of the state and the original place was built into a part of a park in the town center. He felt like something was missing again. Like a key lost in time, a truth covered under layers of dirt in the cellar.   
It was the cellar. Nyx realized.   
It was the cellar that the public committee wanted, just like the denounce of Cochrane’s sanity. The missing piece fit perfectly into the maze he found himself in. It was a foolish foolish show that the committees had put on. He ranged Stark, and hang up. It wasn’t safe to call either - the committees were everywhere. They were even in his sleep, preventing him from seeing himself all the time. Frequency flew from every corner of modern technologies in the sub-infrared range, blocking the natural, instinctive impulse of irrationality in his unconsciousness.   
So he hanged up and moved into an extremely old house, brought the house with material products and information instead of online credits. Before he cut down the entire internet connection in his house, he brought different pieces of equipment in exchange for computing components and studied the art of system organization. He built his own system from old books. To reduce suspicion, he lived outside his house as a romantic scholar who only eager for the company of ladies; but at night he traveled around the unelectrified neighborhood in search of old knowledge prior to the Great Union, almost like a half anarchist his father hunted.  
One night Stark was at his door. And Nyx was surprised to tears. He didn’t keep friends anymore because of his almost double identities, destined to go on a lonely journey. It was almost a year since he heard from his childhood friend. Stark embraced him and kissed his soft yet cracking lips. “You are my friend. A brother and my deepest love. Don’t get lost in yourself. ” He said deeply, looking at Nyx’s eyes, “ because I know I had done so. ”  
“No. ” Nyx said in cracking voice, “No, I won’t.”   
Stark left the next morning for the shuttle back to the city, and Nyx headed back down the cellar to work on his “spaceship”. Over the years, he searched in paper-book libraries across the world and found traces of human footprint into exploring the universe. He found books referring back to the age before Cochrane when humans stepped on the moon and see the “blue marble” the first time. Every record before Cochrane came to a dead stop, however, almost seemed like the paper books from then didn’t exist on this planet or were wiped from the history of mankind. Nyx shuddered with excitement and fear over days and nights. He dug up old models and theories, piecing out a picture that humans tried to forget. He felt like flying with a wing of his own, he was free.  
On the day of launch, he went to bid farewell to his friend and families. He left a white flower on the front step of Stark’s house. The door crack opened, and he smiled to the little boy looking at him with big dark eyes identical to Stark’s. The boy ran back into the house. Nyx left.  
Nyx missed Stark, he missed those youthful days when everything was unclear and ready to be discovered. In the loneliness of the eternal night, Nyx turned his space ship around to look at the brown, greenish planet. It was anything but blue. Continuous dark patches of land swam around the green ocean like guarded dragons, and Nyx might be the only human who ever saw it with bare eyes in more than a century. He touched the smooth glass of the front window, searching for his home in the vast, miniature marble; then he found the river went across the continent where Francis brought him to fish, and where he dropped into the valley. He stared at the dark river running in an invisible stream of hope and silence, witness the past centuries of man. He stared at the river, like looking into a deep crack down to the planet core. 


End file.
